In The Revelry Of Our Lost Cause Poem by Robert Rorabeck

They look best when they’re under the chupah
And getting married-
The girl I used to sleep with in October,
Surrounded by sharks: mazzeltoff, because now
You’ve found your better man practicing law
And oral sex, that ancient thing:
How the tortoise beat the hare, that same old game;
And there is no more reason to buy a new bed,
Or carve the pumpkin, or kiss the mezuzah-
I am always the same old thing,
Doing my lines better than you,
Getting drunk and practicing the bicycle,
the little truancies
I draw to give the cleaning ladies something to do,
After midnight and all us unbounded and hung
Like exhausted sisters in the draperies and Laundromats
And landscaping with the cicadas in your suburbia;
I am not dancing with anyone: Celibate, I am inventing
Humid electricity- See by which way I come and
Hold court smoking cigarettes in the old neighborhoods
And upon the old swing sets you’ve forgotten:
Happily you are with child, or you are expecting; or taking offices,
Always clinging to your traditions of silver and gefilte fish:
He drapes the diamonds around your bones, you become
Kabalistic and forgetful- You don’t go outside anymore
Save to the dress codes of fine restaurants, and never anymore
To studious dreams; but you are something your mother
Wrought, while I still don’t care and even now cherish
In the revelry of our lost cause.